Career Opportunities

Whether you are a prospective PDF looking for a position at UBC or a current UBC PDF seeking the next step in your career, this section provides valuable information to help you advance.

Becoming a PDF at UBC

Eligibility

Postdoctoral research fellowship eligibility can be found in UBC Policy AP10, Postdoctoral Fellows. In order to be eligible for a postdoctoral fellowship, a postdoctoral fellow generally must be within 5 years of being awarded a PhD or within 10 years of being awarded a M.D. or D.D.S. degree.

First Steps

The first step in finding a PDF position at UBC is to search the research interests of individual faculty members to locate a potential supervisor. Faculty members can be contacted directly to discuss potential PDF appointment opportunities, and applications can be made directly to faculty members.

Postdoctoral appointments at UBC are managed through individual faculties and departments. The Postdoctoral Fellows Office does not accept applications nor are we involved in the hiring process.

Post a Position

If you are a UBC faculty, department/unit, or laboratory and are interested in posting a position, please refer to the Job Ads page on the G+PS Faculty & Staff portal. Positions can be cross-posted to a number of job search websites, including EurAxess and LinkedIn. For additional information, contact the PDFO.

UBC PDF Postings

While most PDF positions at UBC can by found by contacting a faculty member directly, some positions may be posted on individual faculty websites. Please visit Faculty Career Opportunities for a comprehensive list of links to UBC's faculties. Postdoctoral Fellowship positions may also be posted on UBC's Faculty Careers Workday portal.

The following faculty members have indicated to us that they are actively looking to attract Postdocs.

Show Faculty Interested in Postdocs

Research Interests: Men's Health Promotion, Male Depression and Suicide, Psychosocial Prostate Cancer Care, Smoking Cessation

Research Interests: Chromatin Biology, Epigenetics, Molecular Biology, Social Epigenetics

Research Interests: Bioinformatics, Cancer Genetics, Cancer biology, Genomic rearrangements, Genomics, Pancreas, Pathology, Patient derived models

Potential project areas:

We conduct translational cancer research and have various ongoing projects focusing on Pancreatic Cancer. We are looking for students interested in a bioinformatics and bench top project studying genomic alterations and rearrangements and students interested in the development and use of patient deterived organoid models for translational research including drug screening, metabolism, and idetification of treatment markers. 

 

Research Interests: Adaptation, Crops, Invasive plants, Plant evolutionary biology, Speciation, Weeds

Potential project areas:

Adaptation, Speciation, Evolution of Crops and Weeds, Bioinformatics

Research Interests: CRISPR/Cas, Diabetes, Human pluripotent stem cells, Transcriptional regulation, ß-cell biology, ß-cell development

Potential project areas:

Research in the Lynn lab is targeted at understanding the insulin-producing pancreatic β-cell, how it fails during diabetes mellitus and how we can make surrogate cells to cure diabetes. We use a variety of models to study the regulatory pathways important for embryonic β-cell genesis and function. The current focus of research in the lab is understanding how DNA-binding transcription factors regulate β-cell formation and function, how they are reguated post-translationally and how they prevent β-cell dysfunction and diabetes. We currently have positions available for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars interested in studying the regulation of pancreatic β-cell development and function. Please contact me personally by e-mail with a cover letter outlining your interests, why you would like to join my lab, and please include your vita. Experience in cell and developmental biology, molecular biology or stem cell biology is preferred. More important are curiosity and passion about stem and developmental biology, and a talent for independent research, supported by a strong publication record.

Research Interests: British Empire History, Canadian History, Criminal Justice History, International Law and International Relations, Legal History, North American History, Political History

Potential project areas:

Canadian History; North American History; British Empire History; Legal History; Political History; Criminal Justice History; International Law and International Relations

Research Interests: Agri-food Transformation Products, Aspartic proteases, Biological and Biochemical Mechanisms, Biophysics, Enzymes and Proteins, Food chemistry, Food proteins, Funtional amyloid, Meat analogues, Nanomaterials, Nutriceuticals and Functional Foods, Prions, Protein aggregation, Protein engineering, Protein folding, Protein nanofibrils, Proteins, Psychrophilic enzymes

Potential project areas:

1. genetic and chemical modification to engineer functional amyloid

2. examine misfolding and aggregation of prion proteins

3. conversion of plant proteins into nanofibrils for use in foods

4. mechanisms of biofilm-associated amyloid fibril formation

Research Interests: Canadian History before Confederation, Quebec History, Liberalism and Nationalism in Canada and Quebec, British North American Colonies (1749-1873), Canada and the Atlantic World, History of Quebec

Research Interests: Asthma, Immune System, Immunodeficiencies, Microbiome cohort studies, Precision medicine, Primary immune deficiencies

Potential project areas:

Genetics of Susceptibility to Childhood Infection Until very recently, clinical immunologists have focused most attention on patients with a ‘noisy clinical phenotype’—multiple, severe and recurrent infections. Indeed, the origin of primary immunodeficiencies is generally attributed to Bruton’s 1952 description of X-linked agammaglobulinemia in a boy whose repeated pneumococcal infections demanded clinical attention. Today, enhanced understanding of human immunity combined with ever more sophisticated tools to dissect the immune response have allowed clinical immunologists to look beyond these "noisy", severely immunocompromised patients to individuals with less obvious immune defects. We have entered the era of "subtle" primary immunodeficiencies that will begin to precipitate a fundamental change and expansion of the focus of clinical immunologists. My lab is involved in searching for subtle genetic immune defects in apparently healthy children who have serious immunological disorders. This journey towards subtlety is anticipated to translate into better care for our patients through improved diagnosis, combined with tailored treatment and targeted prophylaxis. Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study Over the past 30 years there has been an increasing concern about the effects of environment on health. In particular, since infants spend the majority of their time indoors, there is intense interest in the impact indoor pollution has on the health of our children. Our indoor environment has become a public health priority as growing evidence suggests that unseen environmental contaminants in our living spaces may have important effects on children's health and development. The Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study is a multicentre, multidisciplinary, longitudinal, population-based birth-cohort study of 5,000 children enrolled "pre-birth" and followed for five years (www.canadianchildstudy.ca). The main purpose of this study is to determine what aspects of the environment interact with genetic factors to affect children’s health and development. I am a co-principal investigator for the CHILD study and I lead the Vancouver study site. Innate Immunity and Lung Inflammation in Cystic Fibrosis Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most common, deadly genetic disease affecting young Canadians. Even today, only half of the people living with CF will survive beyond their mid-thirties. New treatments for CF are critically needed. Lung disease is the major life-limiting factor for people living with CF. Lung injury in CF occurs through a vicious cycle of airway blockage, infection and inflammation. Current CF treatments rely upon physiotherapy to reduce airway blockage and antibiotics to treat the infections, but these treatments do not specifically deal with inflammation. New treatments to simultaneously target airway inflammation are likely to provide substantial additional benefits in improving the quality and length of life for those with CF. Through synergistic studies harnessing the power of cell biology, chemistry and functional genomics, we are working to identify optimal "druggable" targets responsible for CF airway inflammation and to discover novel anti-inflammatory drugs. Ultimately, these experiments are designed to develop new therapies for safely reducing lung inflammation and improving the quality and length of life of people with CF.

Research Interests: Biological Oceanography, Environmental Virology, Marine Environment, Marine Microbiology, Microbial Diversity, Phage, Viral Discovery, Viruses

Potential project areas:

post-doctoral scholars will normally need fellowship support

Online Career Resources

After your first position at UBC, you may move to a PDF or faculty position at another university. Postings external to UBC may be found at the following websites:

The UBC Postdoctoral Association also maintains a Jobs page on their website.

UBC Faculty Careers

For current PDFs looking to embark on the next phase of their academic career, please visit Faculty Career Opportunities for a list of current UBC faculty opportunities. Please also visit UBC faculty websites for available positions within each specific faculty.